The Economics Thread

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

I was speaking in the more general case, rather then the specific case. There are businesses whee the vast majority of the work force is unengaged and poor. In such cases I think it's likely the deficiency of the workers can really be blamed on the management, for crafting an organisation the workers feel no loyalty to.

To a point, yes. But two things:
- sometimes, getting the workers "engaged" is just not worth the effort.
- it's also the workers' responsibility for staying there.

And the next employee will be just as bad as the previous one. People work for a reason. If no good reason is given to the next guy to work hard, why should he bother? You'll just cycle through people until you get some stupid busybody who likes working for no good reason, and derails things into pointlessness.

I said organization, not job. You may have little aptitude for accounting, but you might do well when moved to the organization's marketing department.

More likely the reverse. But more importantly... What if they don't need another marketing employee?

I think we can all agree it's in everyone's best interests to fit square pegs into square holes, and round pegs into round holes.

But we disagree on what should happen when a manager is handed a square peg to fill a round hole. You seem to say it's always the managers' responsibility to either change the hole to fit, or find another, square hole.

I think it depends. Hunting down a round peg can also be a viable solution. So can hammering the square peg and making do with the poor fit. And I think the peg should put in the effort to find a square hole to fill, though unlike you, I acknowledge that that hole may not exist.

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

More likely the reverse. But more importantly... What if they don't need another marketing employee?

If you can't find a role for the employee, and they're clearly unhappy and unmotivated, then I think the most amicable solution is to let them go, but with a good letter of reference, and if possible try to use your own personal contacts to get them good work, and maybe provide them some kind of transition period where they can continue their old job while looking for new work. While this does nothing directly good for your company, the fact that you put in some effort to help the person will make the other employees happier.

If your company is big enough, however, it should always be possible to shift them to another, more suitable, part of the company. Most large companies always have "holes" opening up periodically(it's one of the biggest reasons HR exists).

[Anh_Minh]

So why go the extra mile for a bad employee? We're not talking about a good, loyal employee getting downsized, here. We're talking about someone who somehow - probably by lying about himself - beat out all the other applicants and ended up being a dead weight.

I've worked with dead weights. I assure you, keeping them around does the opposite of making the other employees happier.

So, again, why waste time and money on him? Why lie about his ability to still produce good work when things are tough?

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

So why go the extra mile for a bad employee? We're not talking about a good, loyal employee getting downsized, here. We're talking about someone who somehow - probably by lying about himself - beat out all the other applicants and ended up being a dead weight.

I've worked with dead weights. I assure you, keeping them around does the opposite of making the other employees happier.

So, again, why waste time and money on him? Why lie about his ability to still produce good work when things are tough?

I was more speaking of the situation where an employee is good, but bad in his current role.

If he's without redeeming qualities, and everyone hates him, kick him to the curb.

[willx]

Why Macroeconomists Disagree:

Now, just for a laugh, imagine you wanted the worst possible experiment design. An experiment design so bad that no researcher would ever be able to figure out the effects of monetary and fiscal policy by looking at the data. What would you do?

Probably something like: make monetary policy negatively correlated with fiscal policy, and negatively correlated with any other shocks you observed hitting the economy. So it would be impossible for the researcher to disentangle the effects of monetary policy, fiscal policy, and any other observed shocks. If you were feeling really mean, you would do your best to try to set monetary policy and/or fiscal policy so that nothing ever did happen to the economy. So all the researcher would ever observe would be a few small fluctuations in the economy due to shocks you didn't observe (and he probably can't observe either), plus a few small fluctuations because you over-compensated or under-compensated for the shocks you did observe, and even here the researcher won't be able to figure out even the sign of the effect of monetary policy because he won't know whether tight money caused inflation or whether you just didn't tighten monetary policy enough in response to an inflationary shock.

That's the world we live in. We live in something very close to the worst possible experiment design for testing macroeconomics. We live in a house controlled by Milton Friedman's Thermostat. It's sometimes a wonky thermostat, that under- or over-compensates for the shocks it can see, but it's still a thermostat. For all its faults, it does not play dice with the amount of oil going into the furnace. Even if it did play dice, you could never be sure that it was playing dice, or just responding as best it could to some shock it sees that you don't see.

http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthw...-disagree.html

[DonQuigleone]

I've always thought that the solution to this problem would be to simply create a simulation of the world economy. Now this is easier said then done. So what I would propose doing would be to create some kind of Massively Multiplayer type game, but where the rules are very similar to real world business and consumption. Human players would operate within the game, and their behavior could be directly experimented on and observed.

A game like WoW is not sufficient though, as it is not the right type of game. I think a better type of game for this purpose would be a game where players are entrepreneurs of some kind.

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

I've always thought that the solution to this problem would be to simply create a simulation of the world economy. Now this is easier said then done. So what I would propose doing would be to create some kind of Massively Multiplayer type game, but where the rules are very similar to real world business and consumption. Human players would operate within the game, and their behavior could be directly experimented on and observed.

A game like WoW is not sufficient though, as it is not the right type of game. I think a better type of game for this purpose would be a game where players are entrepreneurs of some kind.

like EVE Online? Economist are already studying it.

[Anh_Minh]

Don't come crying if they decide the solution is to nuke everything.

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

like EVE Online? Economist are already studying it.

Eve online is much better then most MMOs, in terms of study potential. But I have a feeling it's economy is still a bit artificial. EVE also was not designed with study in mind. However, I've never played it, so I may be wrong.

Another issue is getting economists on board with studying MMOs, while some are enlightened enough to do so, academics tend to be a stodgy lot.

But I think with sufficient study of MMOs, we should be able to solve all the disagreements among economists, and move the field from being a theoretical science, to an empirical one.

[willx]

The Macroeconomics of Middle Earth

Smaug as a fiscal phenomenon and monetary shock.



http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthw...-macroeco.html

[Bri]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

Another issue is getting economists on board with studying MMOs, while some are enlightened enough to do so, academics tend to be a stodgy lot.

But I think with sufficient study of MMOs, we should be able to solve all the disagreements among economists, and move the field from being a theoretical science, to an empirical one.

That's why econometrics and experimental economics exist as empirical fields. Modern game theory has increased the insight in the behavior of economic agents enormously. The problem remains that interaction in a large complex dynamic system like the real economy will always end up giving random outcomes even when you understand the behavior of it's basic elements.

[oompa loompa]

Originally Posted by willx

The Macroeconomics of Middle Earth

Smaug as a fiscal phenomenon and monetary shock.



http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthw...-macroeco.html

Sauron was a monster economist. I mean lets face it, the orcs weren't becoming a superpower anytime soon. Think of all the jobs he created!

[kyp275]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

Eve online is much better then most MMOs, in terms of study potential. But I have a feeling it's economy is still a bit artificial. EVE also was not designed with study in mind. However, I've never played it, so I may be wrong.

Another issue is getting economists on board with studying MMOs, while some are enlightened enough to do so, academics tend to be a stodgy lot.

But I think with sufficient study of MMOs, we should be able to solve all the disagreements among economists, and move the field from being a theoretical science, to an empirical one.

obviously there are artificial constraints, as game balance have to be maintained, but otherwise it's probably as close as you're going to get anytime soon, as far as economy in MMOs go. CCP actually has an economist on staff to analyze the in-game economy, they even used to put out quarterly reports and such.

[ChainLegacy]

Originally Posted by oompa loompa

Sauron was a monster economist. I mean lets face it, the orcs weren't becoming a superpower anytime soon. Think of all the jobs he created!

With the Elves (Europe) in tatters and departing for Valinor, the United States of Man filled in the vacuum with deficit spending and were pulled out of their depression by the World War for the One Ring.

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by kyp275

obviously there are artificial constraints, as game balance have to be maintained, but otherwise it's probably as close as you're going to get anytime soon, as far as economy in MMOs go. CCP actually has an economist on staff to analyze the in-game economy, they even used to put out quarterly reports and such.

Aye. I just think that what should be done is that an MMO be put out that is designed to be an accurate economic simulation first, and is made "fun" second. If a world inside a computer can be made, we can have hundreds of economic cycles in the space of a few months, and provide real data to test monetary policy.

[kuroishinigami]

The problem is, if you put fun as second in said MMO, you won't have enough player joining to make said MMO to be a valid model of real economy.

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by kuroishinigami

The problem is, if you put fun as second in said MMO, you won't have enough player joining to make said MMO to be a valid model of real economy.

It really depends on how good they are at making a game. Plenty of people who put making a game "fun" first end out completely failing to make it fun. If you have the talent, you should be able to succeed.

Also, such a game would likely be atypical, and so could probably attract a niche audience (the fact the game is being used for research might in itself be a selling point).

[SaintessHeart]

China Vanke Shares Soar on B-Share migration to Hong Kon

Thoughts? With the B-Shares bing migrated, this means that China's ecoonomy is is less denominated in other currencies and is moving towards a wholly RMB traded market.

I wonder how that would spell for foreign investors.

[kuroishinigami]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

It really depends on how good they are at making a game. Plenty of people who put making a game "fun" first end out completely failing to make it fun. If you have the talent, you should be able to succeed.

Also, such a game would likely be atypical, and so could probably attract a niche audience (the fact the game is being used for research might in itself be a selling point).

It's not whether the game will attract audience or not, it's about whether it attract enough audience to make the game a valid economic model or not. Economy is after all still a stochastic model in the end, and to build a valid stochastic model, you have to get enough sample(or a perfectly random model containing every type of member in the population, which is much much harder to achieve than using large number of sample). That is why attracting a niche audience is not enough.

I agree that a lot of people that put fun first end up failing even making a fun game, but if even they fail, wouldn't developer that put fun in second will have even bigger probability to fail? I guess one good solution will be make a certain economic model first, and then insert that model in a "fun" game instead of making a game from ground up solely to use the economic model.

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by kuroishinigami

It's not whether the game will attract audience or not, it's about whether it attract enough audience to make the game a valid economic model or not. Economy is after all still a stochastic model in the end, and to build a valid stochastic model, you have to get enough sample(or a perfectly random model containing every type of member in the population, which is much much harder to achieve than using large number of sample). That is why attracting a niche audience is not enough.

I agree that a lot of people that put fun first end up failing even making a fun game, but if even they fail, wouldn't developer that put fun in second will have even bigger probability to fail? I guess one good solution will be make a certain economic model first, and then insert that model in a "fun" game instead of making a game from ground up solely to use the economic model.

Perhaps the research team in question could work with a well established game company. The research team/university could provide most of the initial capital to set up the game, while splitting the "profits" from the game with the company in some equitable manner.

In that way you wouldn't need to have a bunch of academics trying to figure out what a "fun" game would be (and failing miserably).